Thursday, May 2, 2013

From THE FROZEN WITCH

Today I'm working on editing my second manuscript, tentatively entitled The Frozen Witch. It's an urban fantasy set in modern-day Iceland, and features Hrimhildr, a woman raised in Jotunheim (the giants' world) who is returned to Earth against her will. This page is from Hildr's Christmas-day confrontation with her giant foster-mother, Hyndla, whom she hasn't seen in eight years. I was enjoying re-reading it, so I thought I'd share.

Hyndla
surged to her feet, blocking half the firelight just with her body. Hildr sat
rigid in her chair, her hands tight upon the armrests, refusing to look away
from her mother's distraught face. "I raised you to conquer, Hildr, to be
deep-minded and courageous, not to be a squatter in some cold, rotting hall!
And not to break other people's laws, either" she added. Hyndla shook her
head sternly, the long coil of her silver hair falling down behind her back.
"You can do better than this, and frankly, you're going to have to. At
this rate, you're embarrassing me."

"Perhaps
you regret adopting me," said Hildr. Her body was so rigid it ached, and
her face felt like it had frozen. Her lips moved stiffly as she said,
"Perhaps it would have been better if I had frozen to death in the
car."

"Oh,
you would have lived," said Hyndla quietly, almost absently. "It was
almost dawn then. You'd already made it past the worst of the night. We were
all so amazed, Laufey and I and the others. We thought for sure you would have
frozen by then, like your parents had, but when we passed the wreck the second
time, there you were, watching us through that broken window. I said to them,
'Now, here's a child with some backbone. She'll do great things.' So I took you
back with me, to Jotunheim, where you could learn how to do them."

Hildr
had heard the story of her adoption endlessly--since, in fact, she had been
rescued by Hyndla from that car crash. Marveling at
the four-year-old's ability to survive the temperatures, Hyndla and the other
giants had taken her back with them, as a kind of reward for her refusal to
die. It had never before occurred to Hildr that she might fail that early
promise, but there was no denying now that Hyndla certainly thought she had.

Guilty,
strangely afraid, Hildr wanted to tell her, I'm sorry. But she checked herself
at the last minute. What was she apologizing for? Had she asked to be taken
from that wreck? No more than she had subsequently asked to be so summarily
dismissed, sixteen years later, from the only home she could remember.

"I
will do great things," said Hildr, raising her chin and glaring at her
mother. "And I will do them my way."

"Now
that's the spirit," said Hyndla approvingly. "So long as those ways
aren't the elf-ways. And you get out of this hall. And get some babies."

"What?"
Hildr nearly snarled.

"You
need grounding. Children are good for that. Especially for human women."

Hildr
could hardly believe her ears. The taunts of the trolls were still fresh in her
memory:

Go away, little girl.

Go
home.

To
your little house and electric lights.

To
your endless breeding and your short, short life.

That
was what humans did: they bred. They bred continuously, endlessly, unstoppably.
They made babies even when they couldn't feed them, even when sickness would
take them, even when their children would be just as miserable as they. It was
mankind's short-fingered grasping at immortality, this greedy need to make
more, more, more of themselves, in a desperate attempt to forget how swiftly
death would pluck them. All the other races knew this.

And
Hildr was only human, was that it? She was broody and moody now, but a few
pregnancies would set her straight. It's what she had been made for, after all.
That was how her people were.

"Get
out," said Hildr between her teeth.

"What?" Hyndla boomed, staring down at her with round amber eyes.

Habit
nearly prevailed, and Hildr almost quailed beneath that stern, motherly gaze.
Instead, she stood up, pushing the armchair back with a screech. The top of her
head came only to her mother's shoulder, but she stood with her face uplifted,
staring defiantly into Hyndla's wide-set eyes.

"I
said, 'Get out,'" said Hildr levelly. She was so overcome with rage that
she was shaking, but she kept her voice cold. "You've lost
the right to show up and tell me how to live my life. If you wanted that kind
of control you should have kept me with you, in Jotunheim. You didn't. So. Get.
Out."